Sensors, such as motion sensors within wearable devices, are becoming ever more prevalent to collect and detect data about a user. Detected data can be used for many purposes, such as research, medical monitoring, motion capture, or other purposes. Sensors can be incorporated into various different wearable devices. For example, inertial measurement units (IMUs) can be incorporated in many wearable devices, such as watches, trackers, phones, and the like. IMUs can provide accelerometer, magnetometer, and/or gyroscope sensor data.
Wearable sensors bring the convenience of staying with the user during movement, however placement of wearables sensors can significantly affect the accuracy and reliability of the any inferences made from the raw sensor data. For example, a user performing an action can generate extremely different sensor data in a foot-worn sensor and an arm-worn sensor. Further, the number of degrees of freedom of movement vary between different locations on a user. Therefore, in order to provide a wearable device capable of accurately making inferences about a user's movements, the wearable device can be designed to be used at a specific location on a user. For example, certain wrist-worn step counting devices may contain algorithms capable of relatively accurately estimating step counts based on sensor data from wrist movements, however the same devices would provide inaccurate and unreliable estimates if the same device were carried in a pocket or backpack.
In many cases, however, users may decide to not wear a particular wearable device at its intended location or at all due to comfort issues, cosmetic issues, or other issues. For example, a user prescribed to wear a chest strap for medical monitoring may end up forgetting to put it on or intentionally decide to not put it on due to discomfort. Therefore, it can be desirable to provide a wearable device capable of making accurate and reliable inferences about a user's movements while permitting the wearable device to be placed or worn at desirable locations.